American Fascism and the Historical Underpinnings of Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night

Abstract

Kurt Vonnegut’s work, with the exception of Slaughterhouse-Five, is often dismissed as too simply written, too whimsical, and too reliant on genre-specific forms to be considered serious literature. His 1962 novel Mother Night is no exception; even Vonnegut scholars tend to emphasize the book’s absurdity and the cartoonish nature of its characters. But previously neglected historical background reveals parallels between Vonnegut’s characters and specific real-life American fascists active in the 1930s and 40s. Mother Night engages deeply and meaningfully with American history as it exposes the bona fide danger of a virulently fascist and white supremacist underbelly in America that did not disappear with the defeat of the Nazis in 1945.